Of course, it was not a real well sunk into the earth, but it could not have been much deeper and darker had that been the case. It was simply a square shaft which had been left open when they reared the tenements and stables that walled it in on all sides, its purpose being to admit a little of heaven's free light and fresh air. That purpose the well served but poorly. Even at noontide on the clearest day the bottom of it was steeped in dusk. No sunbeam ever fathomed the full depth of that hole.

What interested the little boy most about the well was its cover. To his inexperienced mind it seemed that the vaulted sky was merely the ceiling of the room formed by the damp walls that hemmed him in. Every time he wished to have a good look at it, he had to lie down flat on his back unless he wanted to break his neck. Thus he could stay for hours in rapt contemplation of the ever shifting aspects of that cover. Sometimes it had a gray and dreary color, and fitted so closely that a mouse could not have squeezed past the top of the well. Then the narrow world of the little boy grew more gloomy and cold than usual, and he huddled in a corner, fearing he knew not what.

At other times the cover would be raised so high that the boy wondered if it were going to be taken off entirely. The further it receded the more brightly it shone and sparkled, and the boy gazed into the luminous blue depth until dark spots began to float past his vision, and he thought he was catching glimpses of things on the other side of the cover. On such occasions the upper parts of the walls, now on this side and now on that, used to give out a warm lustre which sent a rare sense of comfort and contentment to his heart. He was ever waiting eagerly for it. When it

remained absent very long, he cried softly to himself, saddened to the very roots of his being. And again, when it met his charmed gaze in the fullness of its glory, he would laugh and talk to it as to a playmate.

"You, you, you," was all he said as he stretched his hands lovingly and longingly up toward the golden sheen. But this was a good deal for him.

That it was merely sunshine he knew not. Nor would he have been wiser, had he been told so. He knew as little, that, God granting life, small will grow big by and by. If he ever dreamt of a change, his untrained fancy could not carry him beyond a hope that his stepmother might let him stay with her alone every night in the room that opened on the well.

Oh, the black nights when he was torn out of his sleep and bundled into the well, with only a few rags to protect him against the chill and the dampness, and with nothing but darkness about him. Nothing to keep him company but darkness and the rats that came out of their holes and ran over his legs in search of food among the refuse that littered the bottom of the well and furnished his only toys in the daytime, tin cans, bottles, worn-out brooms, bleached bones, sticks of wood, and such scraps. On very black and very cold nights it happened that he wept, but never loudly. He knew too well that his lamentation, if overheard, would only render him a beating for solace.

His exilement followed generally the arrival of visitors, men or women or both. They were uncouth and ugly and scowling, and although the boy had seen no other kind of people, he feared them instinctively, drawing back from their nearness as from something that might harm him. Their noisy, wandering talk was wholly meaningless to him, and

jarred on his ears like blows. Often they fell to quarreling among themselves with so many angry words and such violent gestures that the little fellow found an actual relief in the gloomy lonesomeness of the well.

Therefore, much as he disliked to be turned out at night, he dreaded still more to stay in the room as soon as his stepmother was no longer alone. Once in a while he had to do so when she happened to be in a sentimental mood. Vainly he folded his arms above his head and rolled himself up like a hedgehog among the rags that formed his bed, trying to sleep. The tumult about him as well as the fright in his heart kept him awake. On more than one occasion had his step mother's friends kicked him in their drunken heedlessness, or even stepped on him inadvertently.

Those troubles might have been borne, however, had there not been added to them the ever present dread of a tin pail which regularly disappeared on the arrival of strangers and turned up again in a few minutes filled with some frothing, noisome, strong-smelling fluid. He came gradually to regard that pail as an incarnation of all that made him unhappy, a kind of personal enemy that sneaked out and in like a human being, actuated only by desire to cause him pain; and he hated it with the bitter hatred of a grown-up heart. He used to spend hours in a corner of the well, with his back propped against the wall, brooding in a half-conscious way on what he should do to it if he had a chance. But the chance never

came.

Sometimes strangers wanted him to taste the contents of the pail, and dragged him for that purpose from his nest where he pretended to be asleep. Their manner and their words seemed to indicate that they wanted to confer a favor on him. His kicks and writhings to get away from the pungent stuff, against which his entire being revolted, were regarded as highly amusing features of a

fine piece of dissimulation. The more desperate his resistance, the more hearty was his tormentors' enjoyment of the game, and his stepmother got more fun out of it than anybody else. When they had tired of their sport at last and permitted him to crawl back into his lair, and when he had recovered from the coughing spell caused by the few drops they had succeeded in making him swallow, then, but not until then, would he give free vent to his tears, for he was in his way a brave little boy, made so by sad experience. Not a sound came from the nook where he crouched, but had anybody thought of watching it, the heap of rags that hid him could have been seen to heave and shake. Indeed, there were things worse than the gloom and chill of the well.

The room was scantily illuminated at night by a smoking, globeless lamp, so

that when the window had been covered up with a shawl on the inside, only a few faint rays of light leaked out into the well through holes and worn spots. Holding up his hands between his face and the window, the boy could barely make them

out.

All around him hovered impenetrable darkness. It gathered so close and thick above his head that it appeared tangible to the touch. But still higher up, beyond those almost solid shadows, where the cover used to be in the daytime, he noticed sometimes trembling spots of marvelous brilliancy. Viewed from the bottom of that shaft, the stars scintillated with a radiance unknown to those who have only watched them from sidewalks and housetops, where light from a thousand earthly sources rivals and outshines theirs. The boy knew nothing more about those sparkling specks of light than that they inspired in him a feeling of pleasure akin to that produced by the brightness on the wall at day, and he yearned to climb up to where they were in order to touch and handle and caress them. Perhaps they were loose so that he might pick one and bring

it back with him. If that were possible, he would never more have to be in the dark. But then his stepmother would probably take it away from him as she did once when he had been given a shining piece of metal that tickled him when he drew his finger along the edge of it.

That gift, by the bye, did not come from an ordinary visitor. The boy had singled him out from all others for several reasons, and thought of him in a wholly distinct way. He was a short-set, dark-skinned man, with a bushy black beard and large rings hanging from his ear laps. A peculiar, pungent odor, the mark of the man before the mast, surrounded him at all times. It was not quite agreeable to the boy, and yet not void of a pleasing piquancy. He had become accustomed to it, and rather liked it, because in his mind it was inseparably associated with the one person who had displayed real kindness toward him. When that little man visited them, he stayed for several days, and then the boy did not have to leave the room at all, and there were no outsiders to disturb him.

The little man used to play with the boy and make much of him, chattering to him for hours at a time in an excited, incoherent way, and interspersing his tirades with frequent volleys of boisterous laughter. Seated on his friend's knee, or standing in front of him, the boy would listen with equal gravity of aspect to speech and merriment. Now and then the little man pronounced a word which the boy had to repeat after him. It was рара," ," and the sound of it from the boy's lips never failed to throw the little man into a state of irrational hilarity. Once, but only once, the stepmother used hard words to him in the presence of that man, and even lifted her hand to beat him. Her words were hardly spoken when such a dreadful change came over the man's face that the awe-stricken boy sought cover under the rags of his bed. The storm that followed was fierce but of brief duration. It ended when the wo

man pulled the boy from his hiding-place with a profusion of caresses and endearing words that puzzled him as much as the preceding scene had scared him.

One fine afternoon the boy was lying on his back, staring with sleep-laden, blinking eyes up at the sungilt edge of the eastern wall, when there came a knocking at the door so sharp and insistent that he could hear it out in the well although the window was closed. In a moment he was wide awake and quivering with excitement, for the little man, whom he had not seen in a very long time, used to announce his arrival in that authoritative way. Crouching close to the window, he pressed his face against the pane so that the inside of the room became visible to him. The pail was there. Three cronies had dropped in on his stepmother for a sociable chat. The four women were putting their heads together in council, while somebody on the outside kept hammering on the door as if he meant to break it down. Finally the stepmother walked across the room to the door. The instant she turned the key in the lock, the door was pushed in with such force that she barely saved herself from being knocked over. In the doorway appeared two men who had nothing in common with the kind of visitors the boy was wont to behold. Their entrance caused the strange women to huddle in separate corners as if in search of a refuge. His stepmother, on the other hand, placed herself in the middle of the floor, with her arms akimbo, her face aglow, and a stream of words flowing from her mouth. A few commanding syllables uttered by one of the intruders brought her harangue to an abrupt close, and made her throw herself at full length across the bed. There she lay, face downward, kicking convulsively and wailing aloud.

A wild fear seized the boy at the sight of such extraordinary behavior, and he scrambled like a scared animal on all fours over to the other side of the well. Surely they must have hurt his

stepmother in some dreadful manner, he thought, and he feared that the turn would come to himself next. With fingers plucking nervously at his dress, and big tears coursing down his cheeks, he squatted in a corner in frightened suspense. Soon the window was opened, and one of the strangers put out his head. Spreading both arms invitingly, the man called out a few words in a tone that certainly had nothing of threat in it. Their effect on the boy was to make him press a dirty little fist against either eye as if in blindness he could find safety. Then the man crawled through the window. The boy heard him coming, and his fright rose to such a pitch that he was on the point of choking. He could not scream, nor could he move, bling and gasping like a captured bird, he felt himself lifted up in the man's arms and carried back into the room. During the brief moment of passing through his ear caught the moanings of his stepmother. Suddenly they rose into a piercing shriek. Then a door was slammed and all was silent about him again. A little dry sob escaped the boy, for the stepmother was, after all, the one who had given him such scant care as had fallen to his part, and now he was taken away from

her.

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Still lying in the man's arms, he was carried up a step or two into what seemed to be a very small room. There the man sat down with the boy on his lap. Immediately the whole room began to move. It pitched and rocked and jolted until the boy's heart was in his mouth. From beneath his feet rose a clatter and a rattle that almost drowned the subdued, kindly voice which had begun to mutter soothing words into his ear. By degrees his fears subsided, the tumult in his heart quieted down, and his natural curiosity asserted itself. He was just ready to take his fists out of his eyes in order to discover the meaning of it all, when the motion and the noise ceased as abruptly as they had started. Once

more he was lifted up and carried some distance in the arms of the man. Other voices were heard about him. One of these belonged to a woman, but it was not at all like the voices of his stepmother and her companions. There was something in the sound of it which made him think of the sunshine on the wall.

He was dropped down on some soft and yielding surface. Two hands took hold of his own and pulled them away from his face with gentle force. His eyes remained closed, but he could feel another face very near to his own, and the same caressing womanly voice murmured close to his ear in tones so alluring that his little heart straightway wanted to jump out of his breast to meet it. The impulse to look up could no longer be resisted. At first he saw nothing but a pair of dark tender eyes that met his own ques tioning and timid glance with one of inexpressible compassion. The charm of those eyes was the same as that of the voice which continued to murmur sweet, reassuring words. The eyes and the voice together drove the last vestige of fear out of his heart.

After that he was like wax in the hands of the nurse. While she undressed him, his eyes roved around the room, the simple neatness of which made on him an impression of incredible splendor. After a warm bath, he was dressed in clothes much nicer than his own, and then treated to a meal of milk and bread. It seemed to the boy that he had never tasted anything more delicious in his life, and he ate eagerly as if fearing that it might be taken away again before he had had enough.

Still he remained mute and serious whatever was said or done to him. The nurse picked him up in her arms after a while and carried him through many rooms and up stairways while he was pressing his face close to her shoulder. A door was opened finally, and he was put down on the floor of a large room. At the other end of that room he saw a

number of very small men and women run around with much shouting and laughter. All stopped suddenly still and turned their faces toward him.

For a moment the boy stood immovable, staring ahead of him with a horror-stricken look in his wide-open eyes. Then he wheeled about quick as a flash, and a scream of anguish broke from his lips. Flinging his arms around the knees of the nurse, he buried his face in her skirts and sobbed so violently that she could feel his whole body shake and tremble. Nothing that was said or done to calm him had the least effect.

"Merciful God!" the nurse exclaimed, hot tears rising into her eyes. "It's the children, he has never seen other children before."

They put him to bed at last. He was then so tired out by all the exciting experiences of the day that he failed to notice the luxury of the bed in which he was placed. No sooner had his head sunk down on the pillow than his eyelids closed themselves.

When he woke up in the morning, he lay quite still to begin with, trying to understand the unaccustomed comfort he was enjoying. Vague memories of the preceding day's events stirred in his mind and gradually shaped themselves into a kind of knowledge of what had happened. Then he raised his head just a little so that he could look around the room. He saw many beds like his own, and on the pillow of each one a little head with closed eyes and ruffled hair. Suddenly he sat bolt upright. The fear aroused in him the night before was about to take hold of him again. To escape the sight of the children he turned his face toward the only window.

This looked upon the east and the rising sun. The blind was almost down, but at the bottom of it remained an opening large enough to let in a broad

strip of sunshine which painted a rectangle of glistening gold on the floor. The same wonderful brightness that he had been in the habit of admiring and longing for when he lay in the well with his face turned skyward was right there on the floor. But it had now come much nearer to him, almost within reach of his hand. He rose to his feet very slowly and carefully in order to get a better look at it without scaring it away.

Slight as the sound was that he made in rising, it reached the ear of the nurse and she hastened to his side.

"Good-morning, sweetheart mine," she said, smiling at him.

The boy looked earnestly up into her face. Without a word he pointed at the sunshine on the floor. She lifted him out of the bed and set him down close to the patch of light. The boy stretched out a timid hand to touch it. When the color of the pale little hand brightened into a rosy pink, and the heat of the sunshine pervaded it, he drew it quickly back. His protruding lower lip signaled a scare. Soon, however, his face resumed its serene, slightly melancholy aspect, so characteristic of the sensitive child, and he reached out the hand again. This time he let it stay in the sunshine and moved it back and forth.

The nurse, who had been watching him with breathless interest, tiptoed over to the window and released the blind, which shot upward, letting in a whole flood of glorious sunlight. It fell like a deluge over the boy. The nurse could hear him swallow his breath as if he had been struck by a cold douch. Simultaneously he threw up his arms for protection.

But the arms sank back to his sides again, and there he sat with blinking eyes and the sunshine playing on his upturned face. His lips parted, and a clucking sound came from his throat. The little boy was laughing.

Edwin Biorkman.